According to Sankar Chatterjee, a Texas Tech University paleontologist, meteorite bombardment left large craters on Earth that contained water and chemical building blocks for life, which ultimately led to the first organisms.
How life begin on planet Earth has baffled humans for millennia.
Chatterjee believes he has found the answer by connecting theories on chemical evolution with evidence related to our planet's early geology.
"This is bigger than finding any dinosaur. This is what we have all searched for - the Holy Grail of science," Chatterjee said.
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Chatterjee's research suggests meteorites can be givers of life as well as takers. He said that meteor and comet strikes likely brought the ingredients and created the right conditions for life on our planet.
By studying three sites containing the world's oldest fossils, he believes he knows how the first single-celled organisms formed in hydrothermal crater basins.
"It was a seething cauldron of erupting volcanoes, raining meteors and hot, noxious gasses. One billion years later, it was a placid, watery planet teeming with microbial life - the ancestors to all living things," he said.
Chatterjee presented his findings during the Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America in Denver.